Tag: FRL

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Education Blog

FROM POVERTY TO POLICY: FREE AND REDUCED LUNCH POPULATIONS IN ARIZONA

The Association reviewed the poverty rates of Arizona students over the past six years, and we found that a greater percentage of students are enrolled in schools with higher concentrations of poverty.

In addition to a statewide analysis, the Association analyzed the results by school type (charter/district). The most striking difference between the two groups is the disparity in the percent of students who are enrolled in a school with no free or reduced lunch (FRL) data.

Introduction

There is near universal agreement that students from low income families are more likely to struggle to meet and exceed academic expectations in school. Challenges such as the lack of resources at home, home or food insecurity, lack of books and other learning tools, and stressed or unavailable parents, can all contribute to educational difficulties of impoverished students. The National School Lunch and Breakfast Program exists to mitigate the effect of hunger on learning[i]. For the 2015-2016 school year, a student whose family income falls below 130% of the federal poverty line qualifies for free meals. For a family a four, the threshold is $31,525[ii].  A family of four below 185%, or $44,863, qualifies for reduced-priced meals.

The Analysis

Although not a perfect measure of poverty, the percent of students in a school who qualify for the FRL program is the only proxy currently available to measure the level of poverty and corresponding instructional needs in a school. The Association used FRL data available through the Arizona Department of Education[iii] to analyze the distribution of students living in poverty among Arizona schools and changes in the distribution from 2010 to 2016.

The figure below shows the distribution of Arizona’s students eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch in 2010 and 2016.  Each bar represents the percent of total student enrollment in the given FRL range. For example, in 2010, 3.8% of all Arizona students were enrolled in a school with 0 to 9% FRL; in 2016 that percent was about the same (3.7%).  The concentration of poverty in a school is demonstrated by the percentage of students eligible for FRL enrolled in the school.

The degree of poverty increases from left to right; therefore, the farthest range – 90 to 99% – represents the most concentrated poverty, where nearly all students are eligible for assistance. The exception is the rightmost bar, which indicates the percentage of students enrolled in a school that does not have FRL data. Schools that do not participate in the program do not generate any data. There are varied reasons why a school might not participate in the program and exploring those reasons is outside the scope of this blog; here we will focus our attention on the trends for those schools that do report.

Statewide, we can detect a shift of the distribution to the right, meaning that a larger percentage of students are enrolling in schools with higher concentrations of FRL students. Beginning with the low-poverty schools, both the 0 to 9% and 10 to 19% schools have a relatively unchanged percentage of students.  Schools saw declines in the percentage of students they enroll in the 20 to 29%, 30 to 39%, 40 to 49%, and 50 to 59% ranges. These students moved to the right of the distribution, into the 60% or more ranges. Combined, schools with 50 percent or more of their students eligible to receive FRL enrolled 53 percent of Arizona’s student population in 2010 and 55 percent in 2016.

In addition to a statewide analysis, the Association analyzed the results by school type (charter/district). The most striking difference between the two groups is the disparity in the percent of students who are enrolled in a school with no FRL data. As shown below, a majority of charter students are enrolled in a school that did not report FRL data in 2010 or 2016, however, very few students in district schools are enrolled in a school with no FRL data.

Given that FRL information for over half of the students enrolled in charter schools is not available, charter results must be interpreted very cautiously. For those charter schools that do report FRL data, the distribution is moving slightly to the right. In 2010, 32 percent of charter students were enrolled with 50 percent or more FRL; in 2016, this grew to 33 percent.

The results for districts schools are consistent with the statewide trend. From 2010 to 2016, a greater percentage of students are enrolled in schools with higher concentrations of poverty, despite variability in the individual ranges. In 2010, over 55 percent of district students were enrolled in schools with 50 percent of more FRL; in 2016, this grew to 59 percent.

The Implications

Higher levels of poverty in our public schools translate to higher demands of our educators and on our limited resources. If the challenges to students and demands placed on schools increase as overall resources decrease, then the challenge for schools is multiplied. Recruiting and retaining high quality teachers, for example, becomes even more difficult at the same time that the need for them becomes even more critical to student success.

As the state looks to revamp its school accountability and funding systems, the relationship between poverty and measures of achievement must be properly addressed. School accountability labels that can be largely predicted based on the FRL rate do a disservice to the very schools with the biggest challenges[iv]. Our state funding and accountability policies should reflect the real challenges presented to schools serving students in poverty.

Additionally, any policy that takes poverty into consideration must examine how to deal with the significant lack of FRL data in the charter sector. This may include the need for additional data collection or information gathering before a policy can be effectively and appropriately implemented.

A Note on Data

Although determining why charter schools do not participate in the National School Lunch and Breakfast Program is outside of the scope of this blog, finding out the reasons may be important as the state moves forward with its K-12 funding revamp.

Footnotes/References

[i] http://www.azed.gov/health-nutrition/nslp/
[ii] https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2015-03-31/pdf/2015-07358.pdf
[iii] http://www.azed.gov/health-nutrition/frpercentages/
[iv] See the Association’s paper, School Ratings: Improving the Data in Data Driven Decision Making, for a full explanation and recommendations.

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Education Blog

What About Poverty? Food for Thought on the Classroom Spending Debate

Educating children often requires much more than quality instruction; most educators agree on the need to offer services that meet students’ social, emotional, and material needs if students are to succeed in the classroom[1]. Depending on the school, grade level, and student demographics, these additional needs can take the form of school counselors, social workers, before and after school programs, or parent outreach. Such services have been a part of the recent discussion around classroom vs. non-classroom spending.

Missing from the conversations about spending is an acknowledgement of the percentage of students in Arizona public schools who are living in poverty and as a result are more likely to need and benefit from “non-classroom” services.  In the coming year, schools will likely face further reductions in budgets and increased pressure to “put more money in the classroom.”  In order to provide some context and insight into the challenges facing Arizona public schools, the Association feels that it is beneficial to examine statewide trends in student poverty[2].

The graph presents statewide student enrollment in Arizona’s public schools and the number of students who qualified for free and reduced price lunch during the past 10 years[3].  As the graph shows, overall enrollment in Arizona public schools has fluctuated at just over one million students during this time. In comparison, the data indicate a steady increase in the percent of students eligible for free and reduced price lunch from 2007-2008 through 2013-14. In the most recent year, there is a slight decrease (-3%) reported.

The slight decrease in poverty in 2014-2015 may be an indicator of economic recovery and if it continues one would expect a decrease in the demand for student supports in schools as fewer families live in poverty.  All other school spending being equal, one would expect a corresponding increase in the percent of funding that goes to the classroom.

The relationship between poverty and the percent of funding that goes inside or outside of the classroom is a research and policy question worth pursuing. The insights gained from this research can help policymakers understand the larger economic dynamics at work in Arizona’s public schools.  These data may be useful in determining whether the percent of dollars spent outside of the classroom is a reflection of inefficiencies in the system, as it is often portrayed, or a reflection of the level of need in the student population.  The Association believes that these data are important for policy makers to consider as they begin to better understand the context of school level expenditures.
Footnotes
[1] Moore, K.A., & Emig, C. (2014). Integrated student supports: A summary of the evidence base for policymakers. Bathesda, MD: Child Trends.  Retrieved on 5/1/15 from http://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/2014-05ISSWhitePaper3.pdf.
[2] Data for this analysis were taken from the “Average Daily Membership” (ADM) and “Percentage of Children Approved for Free or Reduced-Price Lunches” files made publicly available by the Arizona Department of Education.
[3] We acknowledge that eligibility for free and reduced price lunch is a proxy indicator of poverty and that there are limitations to its usefulness. Schools that do not participate in the National School Lunch Program do not have FRL data and there are a number of reasons why schools may not participate in the program.  However, this does not mean that these schools do not enroll poor children.  As a result, the numbers reported by the state should be considered conservative estimates.
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Education Blog

If Not Now, When Will We Improve the Data Used in Our Schools’ Letter Grades?

In 2012, the Association released School Ratings: Improving The Data In Data-Driven Decision Making where we examined the relationship between Arizona’s A-F school letter grades and the level of poverty in a school.  We found that a school’s letter grade is highly and negatively correlated with the percentage of its students who qualify for free and reduced priced lunch.  In other words, schools with high percentages of poor students received lower letter grades, on average, than schools with more affluent students.  This relationship is due, in great part, to the way in which Student Growth Percentiles (SGPs) are used in the accountability formula. Specifically, we found that the number of “growth points” awarded in the formula is artificially capped by the calculation which uses the averages of multiple medians.

After broadly communicating these concerns to state-level policy makers, which resulted in no changes to this portion of the A-F formula, we wondered if this was still the case in 2013 and 2014. As we expected, schools continued to earn most of their letter grade from the percentage of students who are proficient on AIMS (composite points). As the percentage of poor students in a school increases, the percentage passing continued to decrease (see Tables 1, 2 and 3). A closer look at the SGP scores show, as they did in 2012, that growth points remain consistent across poverty levels, meaning that growth is not strongly related to student demographics.

As in the initial 2012 report, we again call into question the implementation of the current accountability model.  State statute (ARS§ 15-241) clearly calls for equal weight to be assigned to student achievement and growth (50-50), what we continue to see is closer to 60-40, weighted toward AIMS passing scores, a measure highly related to poverty.

Evidence from three years of A-F results indicates that under this accountability model, schools with high levels of poverty are at a disadvantage.  For example, the difference in composite points between a school where less than 25 percent of its students qualify for free and reduced priced lunch and a school where more than 75 percent qualify is 29 points, or the difference between an A and C letter grade.  Given these consistent findings, we must ask ourselves “Is our school accountability model measuring school quality or student demographics?”

In the coming year, the Arizona Department of Education and the State Board of Education have the opportunity to develop a new school accountability model to reflect the change in the state’s new College and Career Ready Standards.  We encourage our state policymakers to consider this research and develop accountability models that more accurately measure school quality, rather than student demographics, so that schools with the toughest challenges aren’t disadvantaged.